LUẬN văn THẠC sĩ (KINH tế) film canons and the academic library

SEPTEMBER 2011Film Canons and the Academic Library Ian O’Loughlin 1600386 A thesis submited in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Library and Informaton

SEPTEMBER 2011

Film Canons and the Academic Library

Ian O’Loughlin

1600386

A thesis submited in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters

of Library and Informaton Management at Dublin Business School in conjuncton

with Liverpool John Moores University

Abstract 1

Literature Review

14

Data Analysis

34

Discussion

54

Conclusion

60

Self-Reflection

64

Reference List

67

Appendix A – Canons

73

Appendix B – Catalogues

77

List of tables/illustrations

Figure A 5

Figure B 7

Figure C 89

Figure D 44

Figure E 44

Figure F 45

Figure G 45

Figure H 45

Figure I 46

Figure J 46

In 2005 it was suggested within a New York Times artcle that perhaps a university level

qualificaton in film studies could be considered “the new MBA” given the moving image’s extraordinary capacity for communicatng messages on a global scale (Van Ness, 2005) The increasingly prominent positon of films in the academic library from the early ‘90s onwards has popularly been atributed to the rise of film studies in universites along with advances

in home video technology Such developments have facilitated the holding of open access DVD and VHS collectons of popular films in the academic library However the growth of popular film collectons has been contemporaneous with an increasing focus on postmodern theory and cultural studies in film studies and the decline of the practce of evaluaton from academic film study In this environment film canons compiled and endorsed by film

academics have disappeared to be replaced by a proliferaton of “best of” lists compiled by popular magazines and websites This thesis analyses the film collectons of seven Irish university libraries in order to determine whether or not film canons do contnue to play a role in their formaton and development

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Introducton and Methodology

The canon can simply be described as the body of works that is considered to be the most important or significant in a particular field (Karras, 2006, p.121)

In his 2006 artcle on the subject of film canons, Paul Schrader traces the history of the secular art canon According to Schrader the term canon has evolved from the Latn term

canon, which means an ecclesiastcal “standard of judgement” that is achieved by those

books that are included in the Bible (Schrader, 2006, p.37) With the emergence of art critcism as a legitmate academic discipline in the Victorian era there surfaced a popular desire to define “the best which has been thought and said in the world” (ctd in Schrader,

2006, p.37) The term “canon” was first appropriated by American and English literary critcs and academics at the beginning of the twenteth century to define the best and greatest works according to rigorous aesthetc criteria The purpose of such analyses was primarily to create guides to the greatest literary works It was on the basis of such lists that the term

“canon” slipped into popular consciousness as a byword for “must read” or “essental” (p.38) Romantc film theorists such as Andrew Sarris took up the mantle in the middle part

of the twenteth century by subjectng popular films to a similar rigorous analysis and

publishing their analyses as definitve guides to the “greatest” films (Sarris, 1968) However, Schrader has noted that by this point the definitve assumptons of art critcism that had defined the discipline in the previous century had already been shatered by various

technological, politcal and theoretcal developments in Western culture (p.38)

For example film studies, like many other disciplines of the Arts, was permeated by postmodern theory during the later part of the twenteth century The dominance of postmodern theory has made it difficult to assert with any convicton what sort of materials should be included in an academic library’s film collecton outside of those materials

explicitly required for course work This also makes it difficult to evaluate the quality of existng collectons It has been observed that a consequence of such theoretcal

developments is that since the 1980s the discipline of film studies has embraced a pluralist approach with an increasing focus on cultural studies and recepton analysis (Dyki, 2002, p.202) This broadening of the methodological approach has been met by a significant expansion of the subjects deemed worthy of analysis This has been atributed to the fact that the discipline has come to be underpinned by “structuralist literary theory, structuralist semiotcs, variants of Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis” (ibid), often taking its leave from the work of authors such as “Roman Jacobson, Claude Levi-Straus and Roland

Barthes” (ibid) and thereby muddying the criteria that a collecton manager might use to evaluate the quality of a film collecton

Yet, as Wexman asked back in 1986, is not the selecton of films for study in the curriculum in and of itself an evaluatve actvity? Why do academics choose to study certain films rather than others and how does one explain the homogeneity amongst required viewing lists in film studies courses at third level insttutons (Wexman, 1986, p.33)? While film studies has moved beyond a singular idea of what consttutes quality or “goodness” (the

ubiquity of both the critcally lauded Citizen Kane and the critcally derided I Spit on Your

Grave in Irish university libraries is striking), it is clear from the homogeneity in Irish

academic libraries’ multmedia collectons that libraries are not necessarily adhering to a postmodern, egalitarian, ant-canonist ideal either Against this backdrop one might ask what is the role of the film canon in the academic library?

It is significant that the source cited at the top of this introducton does not use the term “best” in its definiton of the canon for, in the Humanites, the idea that one can artculate a singular concept for what can be considered the “best” informaton is surely impossible As Quinn states, “the noton of a universally valid set of aesthetc criteria is not possible because aesthetcs are ultmately based on social consensus” (Quinn, 1994, p.7) Yet the revival of the literary canon debate by Harold Bloom in 1994 was primarily an

evaluatve endeavour and a reacton against what he felt was the excessive and destructve relatvism of postmodernist literary scholarship on academic literary critcism Since then the role of the canon in the literature secton of the academic library has been interrogated

on several occasions from a variety of perspectves (Buchsbaum, 2009; Collins, 2000;

Conteh-Morgan, 2003; Doherty, 1998; Quinn, 1996) However, analysis of the role of the film canon in the library remains underdeveloped even as debate surrounding the concept

of the film canon itself has accrued more interest in film critcism in recent years

It is against this backdrop that the central research queston of this thesis is posed:

Is there evidence to support the suppositon that Irish university libraries

develop and perpetuate film canons in the development of their film

collectons?

In the literature related to the actvity of library collecton management one tends to find a general agreement on the idea that one of the primary responsibilites of a library’s collecton is to meet the informaton needs of its users (Agee, 2007, p.1; Clayton and

Gorman, 2006, p.xii; Prytherch, 2000, p.163) In the academic arena the meetng of the

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informaton need is likely to be manifested in collectons’ support of teaching with the materials that students require for their coursework (Lonergan, 2009, p.191) With this in mind, Oksana Dyki’s comments on academic libraries’ film collectons are instructve She writes that

…academic cinema collectons are not composed of classics exclusively and nor should a core collecton be…The scholarly study of film has, in fact, taken research and teaching far beyond the mainstream into more fringe areas, such as

pornography, cult films and ultra-violent films In this environment films such as

Behind the Green Door and Texas Chainsaw Massacre have become part of a new

canon for feminist film studies and other areas of inquiry (Dyki, 2002, p.216)

What one might infer from this informaton is that although canons might endure they are not singular, definitve enttes and are not necessarily explicitly evaluatve Dyki suggests that popular film collectons can also be significant cultural artefacts, representatve of a broader mass culture, and defines “cinema”, in the broadest sense of the term, as being

“clearly the depicton of modern culture and within a contemporary academic context it has become one of the strongest elements of cultural studies” (Dyki, 2002, p.200) The very real implicaton of such a percepton is that collectons serve not only film and media courses but

a wide array of cultural studies and social science curricula Consequently the potental educatonal functons of a film collecton are variegated, as Walters has noted:

The assumpton underlying the acquisiton of popular films and other dramatc works is that they are educatonally valuable in several ways: as aids to our

understanding of literature and drama, as examples of the performing arts, as guides to rhetorical styles and devices, and as indicators of historical and cultural conditons” (Walters, 2003, p.162)

This widening of the pedagogical net prompts our second research queston:

How does the informaton specialist define what consttutes the “most important” documents of informaton in the context of film collecton management?

The pluralisaton of film studies is perhaps exacerbated by the shifting nature of film distributon in the web era We are now living in what has been described as the era of the

“Long Tail”, an age where consumer choice appears infinite, breaking free of the constraints

of the pre-Web era The central thesis of Anderson’s 2004 artcle, ‘The Long Tail’, is that the technology that has prompted the digital explosion has drastcally altered the economics of

popular culture, shifting markets in this area from a reliance on hits towards being driven by collectons of “niches” (Anderson, 2004) The term, “long tail”, refers to the long tail that is visible on a graph when cumulatve niche demand equals or exceeds demand for the most popular products (fig A [James, 2008])

Fig A

Anderson recognised that online retailers and digital media service providers

(exemplified by companies such as Amazon.co.uk, Netflix and iTunes) did not encounter the same limitatons of shelf and storage space as traditonal retailers and were therefore free to offer far wider selectons of books, films and music than customers would have been

traditonally accustomed to He also discovered that, cumulatvely, collectons of niche ttles tended to account for as much, if not a greater share, of such companies’ sales or rentals The implicaton for collecton managers is that, along with the widening of the pedagogical net, the amount of informaton available has multplied In this environment has the

purpose of the canon shifted from being primarily a means of evaluaton to becoming a classificaton tool? This is not an original argument as canons have previously been

suggested as a selecton resource for collecton managers of interdisciplinary collectons (Alsop, 2007, p.584; O’English et al., 2006, p.177) This brings us to our third research queston:

How does one define the purpose of the canon within the context of video collecton management?

illustrate the various states of knowledge and informaton as defined by Karass and to describe how knowledge and informaton travels through these states.

Defining the canon

In this thesis the noton of the canon will be analysed from both a collecton management and a film studies perspectve However, it is first necessary to define a conceptual knowledge model to explain how canons are formed in academia In his 2006

artcle Canons, cultural memory and positive knowledge in humanities education, Alan Karass

presents a new model for mapping knowledge and informaton concepts such as canons that provides a very useful template for this project Karass defines several related knowledge concepts and coins the term “knowledge migraton” to describe how knowledge moves between its various stages The diagram (Karass, 2007, p.122) below offers an atempt to

Fig B

The first term introduced by Karass is “infinite knowledge” which represents all knowledge and informaton in existence, both known and unknown One might alternatvely describe the concept as representng both existng and potental knowledge Infinite

knowledge is “all that is known and documented as well as all that exists but is unknown to mankind” (Karass, 2006, p.120) Positve knowledge is “all knowledge that is known to exist”

(ibid) Evidently, knowledge moves from infinite knowledge to positve knowledge through discovery Collected knowledge is the material within or accessible via a collecton that is acquired from all documented positve knowledge which, in the Humanites, includes “all extant literature, fine arts, artfacts (sic), music and books” (p.121) Collected knowledge produces cultural memory, providing physical “enduring artefacts that preserve and

document the history, ideas and values of the culture in which they were produced” (ibid) This knowledge provides the basis for contemporary educaton Canons are therefore the collectons of documents that are “considered to be” the most important in a partcular field

or discipline Karass is quick to point out that canons are not, and should not be considered, definitve and they may be imbued with partcular ideological or aesthetc values The curriculum refers to those knowledge topics taught within an academic discipline Although curricula tend to focus on the canon they will also look outside the canon “Although works outside the canon can be included in the curriculum, works within the canon most easily demonstrate the major concepts essental to the curriculum” (p.122)

One of the central theses of Karass’s artcle is that at some point works within the canon and the curriculum would have been classified within one of the broader knowledge categories Another premise of the model is that there is a wealth of existng and potental knowledge that could be added to the canon, just as those works that currently comprise the canon could fall back into one of the wider groups To quote the author again, “What is important for understanding knowledge migraton is acknowledging that works can move in and out of the canon and the catalysts are more complex than they appear” (p.123) These catalysts are the criteria (these may be ideological, aesthetc, politcal, cultural etc.) that determine the makeup of canons Consequently informaton professionals, in this case media librarians, need to be capable of interpretng informaton and have a deep knowledge

of their discipline Theoretcally canons should constantly be “in flux” (Buschsbaum, 2009, p.5) with informaton migratng between categories

Yet it is significant that this model does not define what consttutes importance The implicaton is that importance is relatve to the collecton, the university, the academic and the student For the purposes of this thesis, importance is based on two factors Firstly, importance will be implied by consensus Secondly, consensus will be supported by critcal recogniton Simply put, the recurrence of items across library catalogues might be

interpreted as evidence of a canon if supported by evidence of a wider critcal recogniton of the work

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